The Story Of Xena

Unlike Zeus, Xena is a newcomer to the family. She had been left at a vet over 1,500 miles away and somehow found herself in a much colder climate than she ever knew existed. We’re told she’s 6 years old but she has the energy of a puppy and is completely unaware of any physical or psychological limitations she may have. The first time we let her outside, instead of playing by the rules we created, she found a gap in the fence and went through it. We had to change our system.

She seems to be completely oblivious to learning about her limitations and spends hours (yes, hours) each day trying to jump through closed windows to get at some poor bunny or other creature that happens to enjoy our yard. Unlike Zeus, Xena is goal-oriented to the extreme and is solely focused on her target.

Xena’s big problem is that she spends a lot of time and energy achieving nothing. She achieves nothing because, unlike Zeus, she is unable to consider the challenges in her environment and problem-solve. Our lives are a series of events and moments. One moment ends, and another follows. The problem is that sometimes one of those moments contains a less than stellar decision and an opportunity is taken without thinking about consequences. We live near a highway, and fortunately we were watching Xena and caught her quickly, not everyone has someone looking out for them, and bad decisions, made in a moment, have long-lasting and damaging effects.

Here are the three takeaways for today:

1 – Xena is goal-oriented. She does see limitations and struggles to understand why her goals aren’t achieved. She runs around, uses an unbelievably amount of energy, and achieves nothing.

2 – Xena, like Zeus, is unable to adapt to her surroundings. She doesn’t learn from the things she cannot do and believes that doing the same thing over and over, but with more energy will somehow lead to a different result.

3 – Where Zeus has failed to adapt to his changing environment, Xena has failed to adapt to the things in hers that don’t change, like windows and being on a leash. If what you are doing isn’t working, look at what is stopping it and change something.

Growth and development means that we have to stop and think about our situation. Doubling down on a bad idea doesn’t make it a good idea. Impulsive decisions are rarely good ideas for long-term success, and if you’re doing the same thing over and over, you’re going to get the same results. In the next article we’ll look at finding balance.